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Speak Out August 2015 7
RUTH PORTEOUS was a pioneering member of what is today,
Speech Pathology Australia.
Ruth was one of the first students to attend the new Australian College of Speech Therapists,
founded in 1949. Ruth attended the College’s first diploma course in Melbourne in 1950.
She was one of only seven students in that first year. And only one of five who would go on
to graduate.
After graduating, at the age of 20, Ruth took up her first position at the Royal Hobart
Hospital. At the time, Ruth was the sole speech therapist on staff. In fact, she was the only
speech therapist on the island!
As Ruth recalled, in a 1999 article for Speak Out, her work in Tasmania involved a monthly
trip to Launceston where, as she described it, “an energetic out-patient sister could not
understand how a speech therapist would require more time to see a patient than a
consultant physician, having booked in three solid days of half-hour appointments!”
Unsurprisingly, Ruth also became the Council Member for Tasmania in the new federal
organisation representing speech pathologists.
A decade after graduating, Ruth returned as the Director of Training for the Victorian
Council of Speech Therapy when it occupied two rooms and a ‘little hole’ for the secretary
in the Victoria Prisoners Aid Society, on Lygon Street in Carlton.
In this role, Ruth was also central to the negotiations that took place when the University of
Queensland proposed in the early 1960s to teach a speech therapy course. At that time,
examinations and training were undertaken by the Australian College of Speech Therapists.
In an address to the National Conference of Speech Pathology Australia in May 2003,
Ruth noted that “it is perhaps hard to believe how when speech therapy began in Australia,
we were closer to the 19th century than to the 21st, and so to an older tradition of medicine
as Science and Art”.
In the history of the speech pathology profession, Ruth Porteous was one of the pathfinders.
One of the first Australian-trained speech therapists and someone who helped secure
recognition for the occupation, its professional standing within the wider medical community.
Ruth authored two books relating to her work: How language grows (1981) and
Understanding children’s speech (1988).
In that same National Conference address delivered in 2003, Ruth closed with a reflection
on the Association’s past – a reflection in some ways on her time. “Last week I had dinner
in Melbourne with colleagues whose friendship I have shared for more than fifty years.
They said, ‘Say what a great life we have had in speech pathology, how much we have
learned from our clients and colleagues, not only about the practice of speech pathology
and therapy, but about the human condition… [T]he past is not a foreign place, but the
source of all our futures – not past historic, but present continuous.”
Ruth Porteous died suddenly but peacefully on 19 May 2015 from Motor Neurone Disease.
She was the beloved wife of Sandy, loving mother of Morag and Catriona, loving grandma
of Jack and Rosemary, and dear sister of Robert and sister-in-law of Anni.
Ruth Porteous will be sorely missed by all who knew her. The profession will always be in
her debt and has been enriched by her passion and dedication.
GAIL MULCAIR
Chief Executive Officer
Vale
Ruth M Porteous
21 April 1931 – 19 May 2015